CHAPTER 39
POV - Azra'il
There's a fundamental difference between having a plan and having a plan that survives contact with reality. Most generals learn this on the battlefield. I learned it, once again, on a Tuesday afternoon with paper, pen, and a temperamental nine-year-old on our minds.
Rudeus and I spent the previous afternoon sitting at the table with the seriousness only possible in people who still believe advance organisation solves most of life's problems. We made a weekly schedule. Subject division. Rotating instructors. A pedagogical progression designed to move from simple to complex without overloading anyone.
It was an excellent plan. That's rarely a compliment, in my experience.
〈Eos, probability of the plan surviving first pedagogical contact with Eris Boreas Greyrat?〉
[Seventeen per cent. And I'm being generous.]
〈Why generous?〉
[Because it includes the scenario where she falls asleep during the first lesson instead of attacking someone. Technically that still counts as the plan surviving.]
I looked at the schedule with the expression of someone who'd invested time in a document reality was about to treat as a polite, entirely disposable suggestion.
Rudeus did the sums mentally, his lips moving slightly, the way they always do when he thinks nobody's noticing.
"This week you've got Eris three days," I said.
"And next week you've got her three days," he finished.
"Yes. It's fair for both of us."
"Yes. It's fair..." he agreed, with a serenity that lasted exactly two seconds before cracking down the middle. "But Ghislaine—"
"We're alternating that too."
"I could keep her a bit more—"
"Rudeus."
"She doesn't hit me."
"Eris doesn't hit me either."
"Eris tries to hit you."
"The distinction between trying and succeeding is pedagogically relevant, my dear."
He kept looking at me with the face of someone who'd tried to find an argument and discovered, halfway through the search, that the argument had never existed.
[He wanted to negotiate more days with Ghislaine. Found no valid grounds.]
〈That's fear with a negotiation strategy.〉
[It's fear with an even longer vocabulary.]
But I was already thinking of giving in to this request. Because Rudeus teaching Ghislaine was genuinely more productive, because she'd developed a particular patience for Rudeus's learning pace that was mutually beneficial. He explained three times without losing his temper. She listened three times without showing irritation.
I just wasn't going to tell him that now. I'd let the schedule "adjust itself" the following week, based on "pedagogical data" that, by pure coincidence, would confirm exactly what he'd asked for.
[You're going to give in, but you won't admit you're giving in.]
〈I'm going to adjust based on objective evidence.〉
[Which confirms exactly his original request. But with data. That changes everything, of course.]
〈Efficiency has no ego, Eos.〉
[An admirable statement, coming from someone who's just planned to give absolutely no credit to the original request.]
Besides, my sessions with Eris promised to be rich enough in narrative material to make up for any imbalance in the schedule. Rudeus's lessons with her, on the other hand, were an entirely different story. And a less funny one for him.
I was at the corner table with Ghislaine, teaching the alphabet with the patience of someone who's taught reading in thousands of different languages across more than a thousand cycles and developed a method for every type of pupil. Ghislaine needed physical repetition: write the letter, say it aloud, associate it with something concrete. Slow at first. Solid afterwards.
It was a rather satisfying process to watch.
The process on the other side of the room was considerably less satisfying, for Rudeus, at least.
"Eris, if you'd pay attention for five minutes—"
CRACK.
"—I could explain the basic concept of—"
CRACK.
"—please don't use the wooden sword during—"
CRACK CRACK.
I looked at Ghislaine.
Ghislaine looked at me.
We went back to the alphabet.
〈Eos, count of physical impacts in Rudeus's first session.〉
[Eleven. With the note that three occurred whilst he was attempting to retreat, and two after he'd already raised his hands in surrender, which Eris, by all appearances, considers an invitation to continue.]
〈She has a remarkably consistent combat philosophy.〉
[Undeniably. I admire the consistency, if nothing else.]
At the end of the session, Rudeus came over to the corner table with his hair in the state of someone who'd spent sixty minutes trying not to get hit and achieved only partial success.
"How did it go?" I asked.
"Productive," he said, with the dignity of someone who'd concluded that was the only word in the local language that didn't sound like total defeat.
"Did she learn anything?"
"She learnt that if she attacks from the right, I'm slower to react."
[Technically progress. Hers, not his.]
Ghislaine, who was practising the letter G with the concentration of someone discovering that holding a pen requires entirely different muscles from holding a sword, said nothing. But her right ear moved slightly.
That was her equivalent of a belly laugh.
The following sessions established a pattern with the consistency of things that happen because nobody intervened to change their course. Rudeus would arrive. Eris would look at him with the expression of someone calculating how long it would take to make the intruder leave. Rudeus would try to establish a lesson. Eris would attack somewhere between the first and tenth minute, depending on her initial irritation level, a thermometer he never managed to read properly.
He developed a note-taking system where he recorded which sentence had triggered each attack, in a scientific attempt to identify safe topics.
The list of safe topics remained, with admirable consistency, empty.
〈Eos, analysis of Eris's attack pattern during Rudeus's sessions.〉
[Documented triggers: being called a pupil, being called a child, hearing the word "mathematics," hearing the word "reading," hearing the word "progress," any sentence beginning with "you'll manage," any sentence beginning with "it isn't difficult," and occasionally her own name pronounced in an encouraging tone.]
〈So basically anything a teacher would say.〉
[Anything a well-intentioned teacher would say. Veiled threats work slightly better, but Rudeus has a philosophical objection to that method. A shame, from a purely statistical standpoint.]
〈Observation noted.〉
The sessions with Ghislaine, by contrast, were almost meditative. She was already onto the letter J, developing the handwriting of someone who'd decided that if she was going to do it, she was going to do it properly. Every letter with uniform pressure. Every line as straight as a sword cut.
Rudeus began arriving at Ghislaine's sessions with the enthusiasm of a shipwreck survivor spotting land.
"Ghislaine reached the letter M today," he said, with satisfaction clearly disproportionate to the event itself.
"You're using her lessons as emotional recovery from Eris's lessons."
"I'm diversifying my pedagogical experience."
"That's emotional recovery with fancier vocabulary."
He didn't answer. But there was, on his face, the expression of someone who'd concluded his sister was right and decided that admitting it aloud would be an unnecessary excess.
The day of my first session with Eris arrived.
Ghislaine was at the corner table with her handwriting notebook, already on the letter R, developing her own theory about stroke angles that I decided not to correct because, conveniently, it was working. Rudeus settled into a chair by the wall with the face of someone who'd come out of curiosity and was now mildly regretting it, but couldn't leave, the human equivalent of watching a train crash in slow motion.
Eris stood in the centre of the room, arms crossed, with that wild-animal energy of someone who senses the situation is different from the previous ones, but hasn't yet decided how.
I sat in the teacher's chair. Opened my notebook.
"Good morning," I said.
Eris looked at me.
"I'm not going to learn anything," she replied, with conviction.
"That's fine," I replied.
She blinked.
"I'm not going to learn anything!"
"Heard you the first time. You can sit down."
"I'm not going to sit!"
"Also fine." I looked at the notebook. "I'll give the lesson regardless. If you absorb something by osmosis, I'll consider it an unexpected bonus."
Eris remained standing in the centre of the room for quite some time, with the face of someone who'd prepared resistance for a specific type of reaction and instead received a polite shrug.
[She expected you to insist. Resistance prepared for insistence met an absence of insistence and doesn't know what to do with itself.]
〈It's the opening move of the game, Eos.〉
I began the lesson.
Eris stood for four and a half minutes before sitting, not because she'd decided to cooperate, but because standing when nobody had asked her to sit had, technically, stopped making any sense at all.
〈Eos, note that. Four and a half minutes.〉
[Noted. Future reference for the average duration of symbolic resistance before yielding to comfort.]
The lesson lasted twelve minutes before Eris concluded her irritation level had reached the action threshold.
The wooden sword came out of its sheath with the movement of someone who'd practised the gesture enough for it to come out fluid, almost elegant, if elegance had been the goal there.
From the corner of the room, Ghislaine stood, guard's reflex, purely automatic, before her brain had a chance to weigh in.
Then assessed the situation.
Sat back down.
Went back to the letter R.
[Ghislaine assessed it in under two seconds and concluded intervention was unnecessary. It's the kind of confidence that only exists in someone with sufficient empirical evidence already.]
The ruler had been on the table since the start of the lesson. I hadn't planned that consciously, I'd put it there because rulers are part of the school kit and it was, technically, a mathematics lesson. But I've learned, across more than a thousand cycles, that preparation and opportunity sometimes meet in ways too convenient to be pure coincidence.
I picked up the ruler.
What followed lasted forty-three seconds. I won't narrate every movement, efficiency doesn't need a blow-by-blow account, and a lady never reveals all her tricks. Suffice it to say that Eris's wooden sword found the floor before Eris herself did, and that when she finally found the floor, I'd already settled into a seated position on top of her that was, simultaneously, total control and reasonably comfortable for reading.
I opened the book.
Dark brown leather cover, the generic look of a medieval tome of indeterminate content. The cover gave nothing away.
The first inside page, however, gave everything away. But Eris couldn't read yet, so that information was mine alone, for now.
I began to read. Aloud.
"Chapter one: numbers are your friends. Before you fear numbers, you need to understand they exist to help you. One plus one is two. Two plus two is four. If you have one apple and someone gives you another apple, now you have two apples. Congratulations, you've just done maths."
Eris was beneath me with the expression of someone who'd arrived at a situation entirely outside her inventory of known situations and was processing it in real time, without a manual.
"WHAT—"
"Shh," I said, without looking up from the book. "I'm mid-paragraph."
"YOU'RE SITTING ON ME!"
"I am. And you're learning mathematics. The two aren't mutually exclusive, however much the experience might suggest otherwise." I turned the page. "Chapter two: counting isn't hard. Counting is putting numbers in order. One, two, three, four, five. If you can count your fingers, you already know how to reach ten. Try it now."
"I AM NOT GOING TO COUNT MY FINGERS—"
"Chapter three: simple addition for beginners." I turned another page with the serenity of someone genuinely enjoying the reading. "Addition is when you combine two numbers to find out how much they are together. For example: if you have three horses and gain two more, you now have five horses. That's addition. If you have five horses and lose two, you have three. That's subtraction. We'll leave subtraction for the next chapter, so as not to overload the learning."
Eris stopped struggling and trying to break free.
She lay there with the expression of someone who'd discovered a form of torture no war manual would ever have anticipated, and which was being applied with surgical precision and a librarian's accent.
"You're teaching me with horses," she said.
"The book uses horses in this chapter. Chapter four uses sheep."
"SHEEP!?"
"It's pedagogically varied." I turned the page. "Chapter four: more addition, this time with sheep—"
"STOP!"
"—if you have six sheep—"
"I TOLD YOU TO STOP."
"—and your neighbour gives you four more—"
"LET GO OF ME RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR—"
"—you have ten sheep. Ten is an important number because it's how many fingers we have on our hands, which makes counting much easier. Try counting your sheep on your fingers."
Her fists, which until then had been striking the floor in an increasingly weak attempt at physical protest, stopped completely.
Eris lay beneath me with the expression of someone who'd exhausted every response in her available repertoire and reached a state of processing that was, essentially, her version of stupefaction, that outward calm that only exists when everything inside has already collapsed.
[She stopped physically resisting a minute and a half ago. She's listening to the content involuntarily, because ignoring someone reading aloud thirty centimetres from your own ear isn't a skill the human brain possesses, however much one might wish otherwise.]
〈Forced-immersion learning.〉
[A method with considerable historical precedent. Slightly unethical. Fascinating nonetheless.]
From the corner of the room, Rudeus had his hand over his mouth.
Ghislaine was looking at the letter R with a concentration disproportionate to the letter's actual complexity, but it was evident she was holding back laughter.
"What in the world is this book?" Eris asked, indignant.
I turned the book towards her.
She looked.
Kept looking.
"I can't read," she said, with the irritation of someone forced to admit something she'd rather have taken to the grave.
"That's true," I said, mockingly. "I forgot."
"The title is," I continued, but this time in the tone of someone providing purely objective information, without further inflection, "*Mathematics for Dummies. Where Even a Primate Learns Basic Sums.*"
Outside, a bird sang, entirely oblivious to the existential crisis unfolding within the room. Nobody inside those four walls had the same privilege of indifference.
Eris blinked.
"You called me a dummy!?"
"I didn't. That's the book's title."
"You're reading that book while sitting on me!"
"I'm preparing for the next part of the lesson."
"THE BOOK IS CALLED MATHEMATICS FOR DUMMIES!"
"It's an academic title. Demystifies mathematics for beginners resistant to the content." I turned another page. "Rather effective, actually. Explains frightening concepts in an accessible way for reluctant pupils."
"You're saying I'm a reluctant pupil."
"I'm saying the book is for beginners." A perfectly calibrated pause. "Who said it was for you?"
Eris's face went through three distinct expressions in four seconds. The last was of someone who'd followed a logic all the way through and arrived at a conclusion that was technically harmless and completely offensive at the same time, without quite knowing what to do with that contradiction.
"I AM NOT A DUMMY!" she shouted, at the volume the hall's acoustics had, with resignation, already learned to amplify.
"I didn't say you were," I replied. "I said the book was for beginners." I lightly tightened her pressure point to contain her, preventively. "And it was you who said it was for you."
"OW— THAT MAKES NO SENSE!"
"It makes perfect sense. You heard the title, concluded it applied to you, and got offended by your own conclusion." I turned another page. "That is, technically, a logic problem. We'll cover that in the coming weeks."
From the corner of the room, Rudeus couldn't hold it any longer.
The laugh came out with the quality of something held back too long for holding back to remain a viable option, not a small laugh, but the full-chested kind, the sort a person tries to cut off mid-way and fails, producing the sound of someone smothering their own reaction with only partial success.
"Sorry," he said, unable to stop. "Sorry, I—" More laughter. "Sheep."
Ghislaine kept looking at her study material with the concentration that had been admirable a second earlier. But the corners of her mouth betrayed her, a soft curve, the kind that appears in someone who's decided smiling is acceptable but outright laughing would be too much for professional dignity.
Her ears were tilted slightly forward.
[Rudeus lost his composure entirely. Ghislaine maintained her composure but abandoned her neutrality. The two of them are clearly on the same side in this moment, and it isn't Eris's side.]
〈And apparently with genuine satisfaction.〉
Eris looked at Rudeus with the expression of someone cataloguing a second problem to deal with once the first was settled.
Rudeus, noticing the look, made the effort of someone trying to recover composure whilst knowing perfectly well the recovery had come too late to make any difference.
"Sorry," he said, this time with more conviction and less residual laughter.
It didn't help much.
I let Eris go after another three minutes.
She got up with the speed of a trained body recovering position, swept the red hair from her face with a gesture that communicated fully recovered dignity, despite all evidence to the contrary, and looked at me with the intensity of someone cataloguing an enemy for future reference.
"This isn't happening again!" she exclaimed.
"It probably is," I replied.
"IT ISN'T!"
"Next session is Thursday." I closed the book. "Prepare accordingly, Wild Redhead."
Eris stopped halfway to the door, turned her whole body as though she'd been slapped, and stared at me with an expression that went far beyond the usual red of anger, a shade I'd classify as administrative scarlet.
"WHAT?"
"Wild Redhead," I repeated, with the patience of someone explaining something obvious for the second time. "The hair. The temperament. The association seemed inevitable."
"NOBODY HAS EVER— NOBODY HAS EVER DARED CALL ME—" She seemed genuinely lost for words, the kind of indignation so pure it couldn't even organise itself into a complete sentence. "I AM A LORD'S DAUGHTER."
"And also a wild thing. The two aren't mutually exclusive."
"I'LL—" She pointed a finger at me, trembling with fury, not quite sure herself what came after that "I'll." Finally, she abandoned the sentence entirely and opted for strategic retreat. "THIS ISN'T FUNNY!"
"I didn't say it was."
Eris snorted with rage and left the room with heavy footsteps, but executed with all the dignity the circumstances allowed.
The amount of dignity the circumstances allowed was, to be honest, rather limited.
The door slammed shut.
Rudeus still had that wide smile of someone who'd genuinely laughed and hadn't quite finished processing his own laughter. He rubbed his eyes with a closed fist.
"You were sitting on top of her reading a book called Mathematics for Dummies."
"I was managing the learning environment."
"Whilst reading about sheep aloud."
"Chapter four uses sheep. It's pedagogically varied, I already explained."
He looked at me for a second with the face of someone who'd tried to formulate a serious response and concluded none were available equal to the occasion.
"She's going to take it out on me..." he said.
"Probably."
"She's capable of taking it out on me even on days that aren't mine."
"That's the most reasonable projection, yes."
He went quiet for a moment, with the silent acceptance of someone making peace with an injustice with no apparent solution.
"Fine," he said, finally. "At least I've got the sessions with Ghislaine."
Ghislaine, now practising the letter S with that admirable concentration, looked up for a second.
"Reached the letter S," she said, proudly.
Rudeus looked at her with the expression of someone who'd found the only good thing in the whole day.
"Excellent!" he said, with touching enthusiasm.
--------------(*)--------------
Rudeus considerably underestimated the extent of Eris's retaliation.
She didn't limit herself to his days. She took it out on him in the corridors. She took it out on him at breakfast, whenever he had the misfortune of appearing before her. She took it out on him on one occasion when he simply crossed the garden in the wrong direction at the wrong time, a crime whose exact nature he never managed to identify.
The following day, he arrived for his session with Ghislaine with his usual hair and the expression of someone who'd developed, by force, a philosophical relationship with adversity.
"She attacked me in the corridor!" he said.
"The corridor wasn't in the schedule," I replied.
"She doesn't respect the schedule!"
"Eris respects very few things. The educational schedule is clearly not on that list."
〈Eos, list of things Eris respects, based on evidence observed so far.〉
[Ghislaine. Sauros, by Philip's account. Swords in general, as an abstract concept. Physics, when applied by herself unexpectedly. Provisional list, subject to constant revision.]
〈Notably short.〉
[It's a list under construction. Like almost everything about her.]
The escapes began the following week.
It wasn't surprising in the slightest. It was the natural progression of someone who'd tried violence, met resistance, and was now recalibrating towards other strategies. Eris was impulsive, but not stupid, whatever the book's title might suggest, and she'd learned that attacking me produced results she'd rather not repeat. She'd arrived at the logical conclusion that absence was superior to defeat.
The first escape was simple. She wasn't in the room when I arrived.
I sat. Opened the book. Waited thirty seconds, out of courtesy.
〈Eos, location of the Wild Redhead.〉
[East garden. Behind the third bush from the left, counting from the fountain.]
I went there. Reached the third bush. Looked down.
Eris was crouched with the expression of someone who'd concluded the hiding spot had been inadequate, but had no idea how that conclusion had arrived so quickly.
"How did you—"
"The lesson started two minutes ago," I said. "You're late."
The second escape was more elaborate. She climbed out of her bedroom window and reached the west wing roof, a genuine effort, I'll grant her that.
[West wing, roof, central section. Sitting near the chimney.]
I climbed through the window with the naturalness of someone who considers scaling buildings a skill as basic as walking. I found her sitting there, arms crossed, with the expression of someone who'd invested considerable effort into a plan and was now processing its failure in real time.
"The roof isn't in the study schedule either," I said.
"HOW DO YOU ALWAYS KNOW WHERE I AM?"
"I have my methods."
"WHAT METHODS?"
"Teacher's intuition," I replied, with the straightest face I could manage.
She looked at me with the expression of someone who'd received an answer and knew, deep in her soul, that it wasn't the real answer, but had absolutely no way to prove it.
The third escape involved the kitchen, two visibly confused beastkin servants, and a quantity of flour I'd rather not quantify in public.
The fourth involved the stable and one of the mares, who cooperated for reasons I decided not to investigate too deeply, some alliances are best left unquestioned.
The fifth was the most creative: she convinced three servants to swap positions in different corridors, simultaneously, on the theory, I presume, that this would confuse my intuition.
[South garden. Behind the second Lord Boreas's statue.]
It didn't confuse it.
Each time I found her, I dragged her back by the arm with the efficiency of someone who'd concluded ceremony was optional in that particular context of life. Eris protested. I walked. The beastkin servants we passed developed the wisdom of looking the other way, a decision I deeply respect.
Philip appeared in the doorway during the fifth capture with a cup of tea and that smile.
He stood watching for a moment.
Then set the tea down on the table by the door and left without saying a word. A man of few words and excellent timing.
〈Eos, it seems Philip's enjoying this deliberately.〉
[The cup was specifically for you. Correct temperature, fresh leaf. He knew you were coming with Eris in tow.]
〈He was waiting.〉
[With tea. A rather sophisticated way of watching the show from the audience.]
Progress came on a Thursday, sixteen days after the lessons began.
I wrote a simple equation on the board. Basic addition. Single-digit numbers. The kind of thing the book covered in its early chapters, somewhere between one sheep and the next.
Eris sat with that passive resistance of someone who'd concluded that fleeing was inconvenient and physical defeat was guaranteed, but there remained the noble option of simply not participating.
I explained the concept. Wrote the example. Pointed at the numbers with the ruler, Eris had, by this point, developed a relationship with the ruler I'd describe as cautious, near-religious respect.
"What's the answer?" I asked.
Eris's fingers closed tightly over her own sleeve, her knuckles white from gripping the fabric.
Eris was looking at the board with the most convincing display of active resistance I'd ever seen in a nine-year-old.
Then her lips moved.
Barely perceptible. The kind of movement that only exists when someone processes something internally and the processing leaks out into expression before the filter can intercept it.
"Seven," she answered.
She hadn't spoken aloud on purpose. She'd spoken to herself, with that quality of thought that escapes without asking permission.
Then she noticed it had escaped.
Her face went from neutral to red at the speed of someone who'd done something they hadn't planned to do and concluded, right there, that it was entirely unacceptable.
"I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING!" she shouted, at the volume the hall had already learned to amplify with generosity.
"I didn't say you did," I replied.
"I WASN'T ANSWERING!"
"I didn't accuse you of that!"
"I DIDN'T LEARN ANYTHING!"
"I didn't say that either!"
She looked at me with the intensity of someone who'd prepared a defence for an accusation that never arrived, and now didn't know what to do with the surplus of indignation ready for use.
[Seven was correct. She calculated it mentally before realising she was calculating. The resistance filter arrived too late to intercept the result.]
〈It's the beginning.〉
[It is. With the caveat that she'll resist even harder now that she's noticed the process works. Classic pattern.]
〈I know. It's the classic pattern.〉
I made a note in my notebook.
"What are you writing?" asked Eris, with the suspicion of someone who's learned my notes tend to have consequences.
"Lesson progress."
"THERE WAS NO PROGRESS!"
"There was." I closed the notebook. "We'll continue from here next Thursday."
Eris looked at the board. At the notebook. At me.
There was something on her face that wasn't just anger, it was the look of someone who's found a situation where the known rules don't produce the expected results, and is beginning, very reluctantly, to consider these other rules.
She left the room with that recovered dignity I'd already learned to recognise as the standard closing of our sessions.
The door shut.
Ghislaine was at the corner table with her notebook, already on the letter U.
She looked up for a second.
"Seven was right," she said.
"It was," I confirmed.
She went back to the letter U.
[Ghislaine also paid attention throughout the entire lesson. She technically received double the content today. A shame the schedule doesn't account for that.]
〈Unplanned academic efficiency.〉
[The best kind. And the cheapest.]
I looked at the closed door.
Somewhere beyond it, Eris was processing the fact that she'd answered a mathematics question correctly by accident. And was, I presume, absolutely furious at her own brain for cooperating without consulting her first.
It was, on the overall balance of sixteen days, a more than acceptable result.
〈Eos, probability of the original plan surviving now that we have real data?〉
[Thirty-two per cent. It's improved considerably.]
〈Which means sixty-eight per cent of the plan is still going down the drain.〉
[A fifteen-percentage-point improvement in sixteen days. At the current rate, we'll reach fifty per cent in about a month.]
〈Fifty per cent is the best-case scenario?〉
[For Eris Boreas Greyrat? Fifty per cent is a triumph worth a parade.]
I went to fetch the tea the servants had prepared and left in the classroom.
I've already survived empires and apocalypses. The Wild Redhead didn't quite have the scale of either, but she made up in stubbornness what she lacked in continent-levelling destruction.
I took the first sip thinking about the "seven" that had escaped before she'd managed to stop it. Small. Almost ridiculous, said aloud like that. But it was the kind of crack that, once it opens, doesn't close on its own again.
She'd find that out at our next lesson. And she'd hate every second of the discovery.